August 30, 2011

"Body tissue is dissolved and the liquid poured into the municipal water system. Mr Sullivan, a biochemist by training, says tests have proven the effluent is sterile and contains no DNA, and poses no environmental risk. The bones are then removed from the unit and processed in a 'cremulator,' the same machine that is used to crush bone fragments following cremation into ash. Metals including mercury and artificial joints and implants are safely recovered."

Coffins are fed in one end [of a machine], and the body removed from the coffin within the unit and then treated with liquid nitrogen.

The body is then vibrated until the body fragments, after which the remains are dried and refined further, and then passed through filters to remove metals, including dental amalgam. The remains are then poured into a square biodegradable coffin, again automatically, for shallow burial.

An interesting tangential question might be to ask how much CO2 would a human body produce if all the tissue's carbon were converted to CO2 and captured. I'm sure it would fill a nice sized gas balloon.

The Nazi scientists designed better and more efficient uses for dead people's parts. The needed lots of efficiency because of the mass costs they were about to incur to exterminate all of the Russians.

But why are they back??

Have Harvard Phds gotten their noses into the Nazi Archives stored in DC?

"Old fashioned burial" is greener, but only if embalming fluids aren't used. I seem to recall hearing that most states require bodies to be treated with the fluids, even if they are going to be cremated. I suppose if you're really into this green stuff you have to take into account the ecological cost of not only the chemicals, but the casket itself (all that mining of metal and logging of forests). Personally, I'd prefer a plain pine box and none of the fluids. Worm food in no time. But that's just me.

Only if you're buried 1/2 a mile deep. And the carbon contained in a person is not the issue as it is already a part of the life cycle. It's the carbon that is currently (e.g. old ferns and fishes that have been turned to coal, oil and gas) sequestered that we'd best avoid introducing into the system.

A simple, shallow pine-box burial would be the most environmentally friendly. The fossil fuel required to produce liquid nitrogen would likely rival that of cremation, if not more.

I think people's bodies are carbon neutral in the sense that the carbon in tissues ultimately comes from plant sources. That's not to say that fossil carbon didn'r assist in the making of food stuffs. But a carbon-labeling study would show that the carbon was all atmospherically derived during that person's lifetime.

Hydrogen is a different story: consumption of partially hydrogenated fats should deposit fossil-fuel derived hydrogen in the body's adipose tissue.

Of course almost all nitrogen in the body is artifically derived from air using the Haber-Bosch process. This nitrogen is converted by amino acids by plants which we then incorporate.

Yes, old-fashioned burial for me.And never mind the "greener" bit, which just trivializes everything. So much of our civilization is tied into that. Though that (or Christian tradition) means nothing to the new barbarians around us.

Cremation for me. Add to my nephew's collection - he has his dog's urn and his grandfather's (my dad) urn on a shelf somewhere in his bedroom.

They were going to spread half my dad's ashes around Donner Lake (where my dad spent many a summer as a child) when they went up there not long after he died, but the snow hadn't melted. The other half were supposed to accidentally fall out of the urn while offshore of Newport Beach (where my dad spent almost all his time as a teen-ager). Ah well, then the dog died, and he'd never been to either place, but my dad was one of his favorite people.

My mom then suggested he could waiting until she was in an urn as well if he wanted to. She doesn't care where she ends up.

I figure why waste fuel driving each of us out somewhere he (and other family members) will never visit, so I'm advocating dumping us all in the nearby American River. Not my decision, though.

What did it matter where you lay once you were dead? In a stagnant lake or in a marble tower on the top of a high hill? You were dead, you were sleeping the big sleep, you were not bothered by things like that. Oil and water were the same as wind and air to you. You just slept the big sleep, not caring about the nastiness of how you died or where you fell.

An interesting tangential question might be to ask how much CO2 would a human body produce if all the tissue's carbon were converted to CO2 and captured. I'm sure it would fill a nice sized gas balloon.

The human body is about 18% by weight if Google is right. I leave the rest as an exercise for the reader.

But like what was mentioned upthread, if we simply didn't embalm bodies and used degradable coffins, burial would achieve similar results.

And in response to 6:06, I know that Germany does vertical burials to save space. They also have some bizarre system where the family has to continually pay to rent the space. If they quit paying, I guess the body gets removed so somebody else's corpse can go there. (That's where my understanding gets fuzzy.)

"How much CO2 could a woodchuck, chuck if a woodchuck could chuck CO2? "

In the context of dealing with inevitable death, upcoming elections and wholesome future national demographics the best answer to the whole thing is to ask the Left to make a social sacrifice and eat shit and die ideally before Thanksgiving day. We can hire sufficient woodchucks to make it environmentally responsible post mortem. Have a wonderful day!

@Triangleman: I calculated the conversion of a 150 lb man into gaseous CO2 and he would fill an enormous balloon at STP! But CO2 is funny stuff and can easily be compressed or frozen into dry ice. To calculate how heavy of a block of dry ice you would make you can use this formula:

A dead man weighing 150 lbs could be converted to a block of dry ice weighing roughly 100 lbs.________________*Show your work: A 150 lb man contains 150 x .18 = 27 lbs of carbon. Using the factor of 3.67 for converting mass of carbon to mass of CO2 gives an overall conversion factor of about 2/3.

Some states don't allow the old fashioned burials.. except if it is religious perhaps.

Funeral homes had laws passed requiring cement crypts for the coffin to rest in and requiring embalming if a corpse travels over state line.

Yes, a simple cloth shroud into a hole is as green as it gets. In Israel, there are burial societies where it is considered an honor to care for the dead and the grieving family. And yes.. most (all?) burials are traditional. Wood plank, maybe a wood coffin, hole, cloth shroud. No chemicals, nothing inorganic between you and the earth.

Actually, this would fit into a business scheme I'm investigating. It seems that in the U.K., and other places, if a perpetrator invades your home and you shoot them dead, the police will be after you. So, register with my firm in advance and we will clean up for you. We are developing a portable, bath-tub version of the body disposal machine. We just load the perp into the machine and plug it in. In just 4 hours he is down the drain, and there is no body for the police to investigate. No fuss, no muss. Whilst that going on, our highly trained crews will be wiping down the "home defense scene" to forensic standards. Heck, when we're done cleaning your place, the police won't even know you live there. Which is why we don't leave without instruction on how you can repopulate your prints every where. Remember, the important thing is to pay a retainer in advance, and then a monthly maintenance fee. Then, when the felon invades and you shoot, we'll clean up. We do ask that if there are more than one home invader you don't let any of them wonder off. Dead men tell no tales. (Make sure the numb nuts are dead before you call us.)

Mark G. Do you recall ELF? Extra Long Frequency radio? The Defense Department was developing it to communicate with underwater nuclear submarines. Seems Wisconsin has this massive block of granite they were going to use as a reflector. Well, forget Nevada for nuclear wastes, that site is riddled with limestone caves and water. That block of granite in Wisconsin is just the ticket for nuclear waste. Plus Wisconsin is more centrally located than Nevada is. Since Wisconsin hasn't been doing a lot of mineral development, that block of granite isn't full of mine shafts. Thank the environmentalist for saving the granite for something really useful.

"Oh, there was a jolly SwagmanWho camped in a billabong,Under the shade of a coolibah tree,And he sang as he looked at the old billy boilin'Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda me darlin'?Who'll come a-waltzing Matilda with me?"

Pine box burial still legal in the 49th state. No outside entities need be involved. Get 'em in the ground within 24 hours and no embalming required. One benefit of living in a state where laws have to bend to the fact that some services that are unavailable in large rural areas.

July 5th a dear friend's husband died at 5 a.m. here in our largest city. Plot and casket purchased, family put his body in the box and transported it to the cemetary in the back of his pick-up and less than 12 hours after death his body was under the dirt. He got all he wished for in the end. Well loved family physician who lived and died frugally.

The very first comment nailed it -- "green" burial as the last apology to Mother Earth for even existing. Humanity itself as the original sin. The ultimate manifestation of the over-the-top narcissism of environmentalism.

I used to work for a corporation that made plastics grinders for recycling. The kind that Saddam Hussein's boys used on living victims. Well, why not? 1960's radicals used to want to kill everybody over age 35, so let's get started.

Never happened. He was guilty of plenty of other and worse barbarisms--government-authorized rapists, for example--but that one is a myth.

As for the carbon-neutral snark, greens make themselves an easy target on this. Much of the green lifestyle involves changes in one's carbon footprint that are so small as to be in the rounding error--pennywise and pound-foolish, as it were.

Real changes are going to require massive conversion to nuclear power (with attendant economic disruption), which of course won't help any of the transportation issues, as there is no practical and portable way to store energy except in the form of gasoline and diesel.

Actually, the most environmentally friendly body disposal of all is just to dig a hole and plant the untreated body - which then returns to the soil. Unfortunately, this is illegal in all 50 states - for environmental reasons. Also, do the processes in the article remind anyone of the Fremen water reclamation practice from "Dune"? I'm surprised we got there so fast.

Alkaline dissolution effectively destroys prions, so it was used on cattle that died of mad cow disease. Even incineration isn't 100% effective for this; prions are extremely rugged.

As for disposing of nuclear waste in trenches: this is not the best idea, since some of the material comes back up in volcanoes fairly rapidly. Cosmogenic 10Be (T1/2 of 1.3 million years) survives in sufficient quantity to time this recycling. "Mud volcanoes" on the ocean floor may recycle even faster.

In other words, cremation orburial at sea long beach and resomation differs in the process of disposing bodies. The former uses fire while the latter uses chemicals to dissolve a body. Its not yet available in most countries but in Europe and North America.

While that sounds like a sound alternative to cremation, I would really prefer that peoples bodies are not dispersed back into the water system. Not only does that sounds wrong, but also cruel and inhumane. Just find the person some cremation services that will do it more effectively.

I honestly didn't know there were options other than cremation and burial. In my family we've always done burials. Some have wanted to be cremated but changed their minds before passing. The alkaline water thing, though. That's something I've never heard of and it seems pretty interesting.-Seamus | http://skylinememorialpark.com/Cremation/

I've been looking for some insights on cremation services, but haven't had any luck yet. There's so many things that go into finding a quality cremation service, and I don't know what to look for. This helped me understand it more, and I feel better about finding a service.

My grandma was cremated and we have her in an urn in our home. It is great to still have her around. I mean it is a bit creepy to think about, but it is really great. I know that I really enjoy that we could keep her though.Jak Manson | http://www.herbwalker.com/what-we-do/funeral-services

I think cremation is a hard hard decision to make. I often wonder what the person that passes away thinks about it. My aunt was cremated and I don't know where her ashes went I'll have to find out from a relative. http://www.cremationchicago.com/services.html

My father in law recently passed away. His request was to get cremated. I have never been through this process with a loved one before. Does it cost less than a traditional burial? http://www.keenanfuneralhomes.com/services/

My father in law recently passed away. His request was to get cremated. I have never been through this process with a loved one before. Does it cost less than a traditional burial? http://www.keenanfuneralhomes.com/services/